


Benediction

by Caedmon



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5217110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedmon/pseuds/Caedmon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Rose falls through the void into Pete's World, the Doctor visits her gravestone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Benediction

**Author's Note:**

> Based on real events and modified to reflect the Doctor and Rose. 
> 
> I own nothing.  
> Thank you for reading. 
> 
> I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry.

The Doctor knelt before the marker and lay the bouquet on the ground. 

“Hello, Rose,” he said quietly, a catch in his voice.

The marble headstone didn’t answer him. He hadn’t expected it to, but he spoke to it anyway. 

“I know you’re not there. I know perfectly well where you are. I know you’re alive and well with your mum and dad and...Mickey. But to me...for me, you’re gone. You’re so gone, you’re so far away. It’s easier to think of you as dead sometimes rather than drive myself mad with the thought of bringing you back to me. ‘Sides, this place makes me feel connected to you somehow, even if you never laid eyes on it, even as it rips me apart to look at it. I come here to honor you, Rose. I don’t come here enough.

“You deserve honor, d’you know? You deserve everything. You deserve much better than I ever could have given you, for sure. But I wanted to give you everything, Rose Tyler. You know the phrase ‘give so-and-so the world’? I wanted to give you the universe, Rose. Turns out I gave you the wrong universe. More fool me.

“Shireen called me on your phone when the list of the dead came out. She wanted to know if I was having a funeral for you or if she should handle the arrangements. She just knew that I would be the one to come to about how to take care of you and memorialize you.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else putting together a service to honor you and remember you. Nobody left here will ever know how precious you are, how special. It had to be me. So I did it. You’d have been proud, Rose. I did domestics.”

The Doctor gave a tiny, weak smile and pushed the bouquet to the side so he could get a little closer to the stone.

“Remember how all your friends looked at us funny when they’d see us together before? Their tune has changed now. Treated me like a grieving spouse, they did. Which I am, Rose. You were never just my plus-one. I like to think you always knew how precious you were to me - are to me. Part of my soul has died now that you’re gone. I’ll smile and laugh again, someday, but it’ll never be the same. _I’ll_ never be the same. The pain of losing you, of watching the love of all my lives fall through that void will forever taint any joy I have left. But I don’t want you to feel sad about that, precious girl. I just want you to know that you’re not _alone_ in that, because I know you’re grieving, too. 

“I should have told you I loved you,” he said, his voice thickening. “I should have said it, whispered it, sung it, written it in the stars. You knew, I know you knew, but you should have heard the words fall out of my mouth from the moment I realized the truth of them. You deserved that and I failed you. Oh, how I failed you.”

He sniffed hard and swiped at his eyes as if trying to brush away his agony. “Your casket was buried with full military honors. I demanded that UNIT honor you, and they immediately agreed. Your mother’s casket was buried at the same time, but without all of the honors you got. But don’t worry, Rose, I made sure your mother was taken care of.”

The Doctor rocked forward to his knees, leaning his head against the marble that had been warmed by the sun, running one long finger around the photo implanted in the headstone, then dragging his fingertips over the words inscribed there, settling on outlining the letters that spelled out _beloved_. A single tear fell off the end of his nose and splashed to the base of the headstone. His voice broke.

“I just miss you so _goddamn_ much, Rose. And I can’t see you, can’t cross your timeline or mine, can’t get through the universe….all I can do is come here or go lie in your bed in the TARDIS. 

“I can’t stand it,” he choked, escalating. “I can’t, Rose. You have to fix this, you have to. I don’t know what to do, you always said the things that made me have whatever clever moments I had...without you all my cleverness is gone. You took it with you when you took my hearts and soul…

“Please come back, Rose,” he sobbed brokenly. “Please come back. I need you. I need you to get through every moment, I don’t know how to be the Doctor anymore without you. You took all of the good in me with you. _Please,_ Rose, _please_...”

The Doctor was leaning against the headstone now, curled against it. The marble provided no comfort but the Time Lord leaned into it and wept anyway. He cried for a while, letting his tears flow openly and unchecked until they wouldn’t come anymore. When his eyes were left dry, when all the tears had come for that moment, he sat back on the ground to stare at the stone marker for a while. 

_Rose Marion Tyler - 1986-2007. Beloved daughter and friend._

“I love you, Rose,” the Doctor whispered. “I’m trying to find a way to tell you that and know that you can hear me. I want to tell you that every day, every moment of your life. I want to get you back to me. But until then, I’ll just pretend you can hear me from here. I fell in love with you around the time you couldn’t kill a dalek and wouldn’t let me damage my soul anymore. I will love you until my last body catches and burns. 

“You are always going to be my love, Rose Tyler, and I will forever regret not telling you that. Not in person. 

“So here it is now, in case I never get to say it: I love you. I loved you then, I love you now, I’ll love you millennia from now. 

“I’m forever your Doctor.”

He sat in silence for a while longer, his thoughts swirling and sad, then stood slowly. He bent low to kiss the “R” in ‘Rose’, reached to his right to grab the bouquet and positioned it just so under the embedded picture of his love. Then he turned and walked away.


End file.
